It’s
important to know that there’s several new features and options in System
Center – Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1 – BETA related to network
virtualization, so I will start to blog about it now and walk through the
different configuration options.

This
blog post will talk about the networking Fabric.

Fabric
in VMM is a layer of abstraction above your physical and virtual infrastructure
that should serve the purpose of cloud computing. Fabric will contain
virtualization hosts, networks and network equipment, storage, and also some
additional server roles that will maintain and support the life cycle of your
fabric resources.

When you
are configuring and deploying a Microsoft Private Cloud, Fabric in VMM is the
place to start.

Network
virtualization in VMM does also has its starting point here.

A
logical network in VMM can contain several sites, subnets and VLANs that
represents the physical network.

A
logical network must be in place as it’s the foundation for network
virtualization (CA’s and PA’S), no matter what kind of network virtualization
technique you are using.

Default in SP1 is NVGRE – and not IP-rewrite as in CTP2.

When you
enable networking virtualization on the logical network, you can see the
following in the jobs pane:

And during
this modification you’ll find an interesting agent installed on your Hyper-V
hosts:

More on
this in the next post.

Now, let’s
check what the Beta bits are bringing to the table.

Logical Switch

The
Hyper-V Extensible Switch is dramatically changed in Windows Server 2012
(previously known as networks) and
VMM fully supports and leverage its capabilities. An extensible virtual switch
provides several options and configurations in a natively fashion, and does
also supports ‘add-ons’ from thir-parties.

A
logical switch is meant to represent a single configuration for you to apply to
many or every hosts for a consistent configuration in your cloud infrastructure
fabric.

Included
in the logical switch is Native port
profiles for uplink ports – used to define logical network definitions that
should be available on every physical NIC connected to the logical switch.

Native port profiles for virtual ports – are used to define settings to
the virtual switches that your VMs are connected to.

Port classifications – works as an identity to classify
virtual port profiles for particular networks. So a VM can be deployed to
different logical switches where the name matches based on the virtual port
profiles on each switch.

Monday, September 24, 2012

Unfortunately,
there hasn’t been enough time for my regular community activities like forums
and blogging, but I will soon catch up to share some good tips and tricks from
the field, since that’s where I’ve been the last months, in the field.

It has
been a really interesting project since Hyper-V is my bread and butter, laying
close to my heart.

So when
Leandro reached out to me for a while ago, I was lucky and grateful to accept
the honor without any doubt.

The book
can be ordered now, and is scheduled for December this year. This is probably
the best Christmas gift you can give your IT-friends, so I would strongly
recommend this one for you all.

The book
is not the usual theoretical stuff you would suspect, but is straight down to business
from the first page, on the very first chapter.

This is the third book I am either writing
myself or participating on as a reviewer, and I must say I enjoy to read the
good work from my co-authors and MVP’s. So if you are planning to write a book
on related subjects and need a helping hand, feel free to contact me.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

As you
may be aware of, SP1 for System Center 2012 is now available in Beta.

The
first thing I will dig into is the new features in VMM and share the good stuff
with you.

First
thing first is the ‘availability set’ on the hardware profile for the VMs.

Finally,
we can have a deeper cluster integration with VMM and create and manage this
with this premium management tool.

In other
words, if you have a distributed application – or anything else that should not
be located on the same cluster node, you can create an availability set.

So what does this give?

VMM have
some optimization techniques like Dynamic Optimization and Power Optimization.

Especially
the dynamic optimization option will be a good friend of you once you enable
it, to distribute and re-balance the workloads among a Hyper-V Cluster.

If you
have created an availability set, dynamic optimization will not mess up your
configuration and place the VMs on the same node. Together with the option to
set preferred and possible owners of virtual machines, VMM will always attempt to
keep those virtual machines on separate hosts to secure uptime for your
services.

This is
a well-known cluster setting that we have wanted to see in VMM for a long time.

When you
have created an availability set you might also be glad to know that you can
also prioritize those virtual machines. When a virtual machines is defined as ‘high
priority’, the cluster will then start and place those virtual machines before
medium and low-priority virtual machines. Hyper-V uses values from CPU, Memory
and also NUMA to give the virtual machines best possible performance compared
to virtual machines defined as medium or low.

Windows Server 2012 and SQL Server 2012 Support
With this Beta release, all System Center 2012 SP1 components are now enabled
to manage and run in a Windows Server 2012 environment. System Center
2012 SP1 Beta also now supports the use of SQL Server 2012.

Network Virtualization
With System Center 2012 SP1 you can take advantage of the Virtual Machine
Manager’s ability to manage Hyper-V network virtualization across multiple
hosts, simplifying the creation of entire virtual networks.

Hybrid Cloud Management and the Service Provider
Foundation API
System Center 2012 already enables optimization of your organization’s private
cloud and Windows Azure resources from a single pane of glass, using the
AppController component. In System Center 2012 SP1 we’ve extended
AppController’s capabilities to include cloud resources offered by hosting
service providers, giving you the ability to integrate and manage a wide range
of custom and commodity IaaS cloud services into the same single pane of glass.

Service Provider Foundation API
The Service Provider Foundation (SPF) API is a new, extensible OData REST API
in System Center 2012 SP1 that enables hosters to integrate their System Center
installation into their customer portal and is automatically integrated with
customers’ on-premises installation of AppController. A simple exchange of
credentials enables enterprises to add the Service Provider cloud to App
Controller for consumption alongside private and public cloud resources. SPF
also has multi-tenancy built-in enabling operation at massive scale, controlling
multiple scale-units built around Virtual Machine Manager.

Windows Azure Virtual Machine management
System Center 2012 SP1 now integrates with Windows Azure Virtual Machines
enabling you to move on-premises Virtual Machines to run in Windows Azure and
then manage from your on-premises System Center installation enabling a range
of workload distribution and remote operations scenarios

Enhanced backup and recovery options
System Center 2012 SP1 Data Protection Manager adds the option to host server
backups in the Windows Azure cloud, helping to protect against data loss and
corruption while integrating directly into the existing backup administration
interface in System Center. More details.

Global Service Monitor Support
System Center 2012 SP1 includes support for a new Windows Azure-based service
called “Global Service Monitor” (GSM). GSM extends the application monitoring
capabilities in System Center 2012 SP1 using Windows Azure points of presence
around the globe, giving a true reflection of end-user experience of your
application. Synthetic transactions are defined and scheduled using your
on-premises System Center 2012 SP1 Operations Manager console; the GSM service
executes the transactions against your web-facing application and GSM reports
back the results (availability, performance, functionality) to your on-premises
System Center dashboard. You can integrate this perspective with other
monitoring data from the same application, taking action as soon as any issues
are detected in order to achieve your SLA. To evaluate System Center 2012 SP1
with GSM, sign up for the
customer preview of GSM.

I will test
and play with every component, but first thing first: Virtual Machine Manager.

Oh, and you
will of course not be able to Live
Migrate a running VM from your private cloud to Windows Azure. You will
have to store it in the library and make it accessible for Azure before you can
run it in Microsoft’s cloud datacenter.